home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Understanding McLuhan
/
Understanding McLuhan (1996)(Voyager)[Mac-PC].iso
/
pc
/
mcluhan.dxr
/
06788_Field_TCUM T353.txt
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1996-04-10
|
802b
|
16 lines
and accelerating human meetings and goings-on, clocks
increase the sheer quantity of human exchange.
It is not really incongruous, therefore, when Mumford
associates “the clock and the printing press and the blast
furnace” as the giant innovations of the Renaissance. The
clock, as much as the blast furnace, speeded the melting of
materials and the rise of smooth conformity in the contours of
social life. Long before the industrial revolution of the later
eighteenth century, people complained that society had
become a “prose machine” that whisked them through life at a
dizzy pace.
The clock dragged man out of the world of seasonal
rhythms and recurrence, as effectively as the alphabet had
released him from the magical resonance of the spoken word